TWO Hitler hunters claim to have tracked down 39 relatives of the Nazi leader in the US and Austria.

Journalist Jean-Paul Mulders and historian Marc Vermeeren, both Belgians, say they have decoded Adolf’s DNA and matched it to discarded ­cigarette butts in an Austrian village, a used paper napkin from a New York fast food restaurant and letters sent from France more than 30 years ago.

They apparently tracked down three brothers living in Long Island, New York, who are directly descended from Hitler’s father.

The brothers, Louis, Brian and Alexander Stuart-Houston, are said by Mulders and ­Vermeeren to be the great-grandsons of Hitler’s father Alois.

The two men claim the brothers have entered into a pact never to have children to avoid producing further descendants of the Führer.

They also claim more descendants live in Austria’s Waldviertel region, near where Hitler was born.

Mr Mulders said: “They live under new names which slightly differ from Hitler, such as Hietler, Hiedler or Huetler. Most of them probably don’t know of their relationship.”

The duo’s claims were first ­published in Spanish newspaper El Mundo.

Last year, a senior academic at an Israeli university claimed to have a “family connection” to Hitler.

Michael Mach of Tel Aviv University said his grandmother had married the Nazi leader’s nephew Hans Hitler after divorcing his grandfather.

Ben Barkow, of the London-based Wiener-Library, an archive of Jewish history, described the investigation as “ghastly”.

He said: “If there are Hitler relatives in America, they are probably very distant. I don’t see what these men are trying to prove or achieve.”